The production of sound equiaxed castings with significant grain uniformity by conventional investment casting processes requires considerable attention to the design of gating, runner, and riser systems as well as to the thermal parameters involved. This entails complex gating schemes to ensure proper metal delivery into the mold as well as a massive riser system to promote solidification toward the riser. Therefore, the gating efficiency of conventionally cast equiaxed castings is usually only in the range of 45 to 65%, whereby the lower metal efficiency results in higher manufacturing costs. The castings produced by conventional processes also suffer from high cost of welding and rework associated with difficulty in feeding molten alloy to form complex gas turbine castings having variable geometry. The gates and risers which are an integral part of casting geometry in the conventional process, also suffer from high cost of gate and riser removal and finishing costs to bring the part back to near net shape. The primary mode of heat transfer in conventional casting processes is mostly by passive conduction and radiation from the hot mold to its surroundings. As a result, the rate of heat extraction is limited.